I only spent a year living in Sheffield, but it’s always held a place in my heart. I’d move back there in a heartbeat and probably should have instead of my last move. That, however, is another story.
It’s kind of hard to explain why I love Sheffield so much, but I guess that it is mostly wrapped up in the fact that jackie lived there when we first met, that we have some great friends who live in said city and that I also fell in love with Sheffield Wednesday when I was there.
A short year, but somewhat defining in my life.
Anyway. Somehow I was watching The One Show on BBC One last week (lord knows why, even the strangely alluring charms of Christine Bleackley can’t save that show) and they had a feature on the Tinsley Towers. Or, rather, they had a feature on how they are about to be demolished.
They’ve stood useless for a good few years, are only about 70-odd years old and some say ugly. If you are unfamiliar with them, they are the two huge cooling towers that stand about 50 feet from the M1 as you reach the Sheffield exits.
They’ve obviously also been silent for years, but have welcomed every single car that whizzed past them…silently saying “This is Sheffield”. The city has a proud industrial heritage that was decimated in the latter decades of the last century and destroying the towers would remove the last reminders of this.
It’d be a travesty and I can’t help feeling that Sheffield will lose some of it’s charm as a result. Those towers welcomed me to the city over a decade ago and they have done ever since. It just won’t be the same.
Of course some would argue that they are reminders of the pain that the city felt when the steel industry was in almost terminal decline. For me they are a small, but important part of the fabric of the steel city that should be retained.
They are iconic, majestic and harmless. Save the Tinsley Towers.
http://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2217710744
-pc.
I think people’s complaining about this is fair but a little romanticised. I mean, drive around the city a little. The roads are crumbling. Go the the Royal Hallamshire hospital. Tell me that doesn’t need some investment! The city needs to invest money in it’s infrastructure, instead of putting up a fascia; for example, while you’re on your trip, check out the development of the road and accomodation around the Wicker and West Bar road system. So easy and convenient for City Centre life! New people, come to Sheffield!! It’s great! But don’t mention the <1 mile drive out down the Valley on Carlisle Street – a major road for locals. The road surface is literally falling to bits. It’s the same everywhere.
It would have been a terrible thing to have to spend millions upon millions making it safe for development or (as some reports have suggested) even safe to remain standing.
The event, by the way, was spectacular. I watched with tens of thousands at the top of the hill at Meadowbank with what seemed like most of the population of Rotherham, and there was a great atmosphere.
I don’t personally feel that they represented the heritage of Sheffield. There are still 2 generations alive of steelworkers and miners lest we forget, and there are millions of tons of Sheffield Steel around the world. For me, they had the same grim, pale, scarred and wan tone as the Don Valley in the 80’s when I was growing up. It was a disgusting de-industrialised wasteland. One that scared me, and not only showed the scale and power of what came before but the dreadful impact it had on the landscape. We don’t have to forget our prosperous industrial past and the heritage that comes with it, but it’s best forgetting the strife and bitterness that came when Sheffield’s hive of secondary industry came to an end in the early 80’s.
So I’m glad they pulled them down so defiantly. The biomass fuel station being put in its place is controvertial (particualrly pertaining to it’s effectiveness) but positive.
Before I went to Sheffield Uni, somebody berated the Tinsley Towers and said that was a good enough reason NOT to go and live and study in Sheffield… how wrong they were, how right I was not to take any bloody notice!
Mrs.C.